Terminating the National Emergency Declared to Impose Duties on Articles Imported From Canada

Floor Speech

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Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to thank my colleague from Minnesota Senator Klobuchar for her hard work on this effort and her work over many years in leading the U.S.-Canada interparliamentary dialogue. That is a dialogue that we have with some nations, nations that are longstanding allies of the United States, and I maintain that the U.S.- Canada relationship is really the model for what a relationship between two neighboring nations should be.

I spoke yesterday with respect to the Brazil tariffs, and I talked about the wrecking ball that Donald Trump is taking to the American economy. There have been three academic studies of the Virginia economy in recent months, and they were recently summarized by a publication called Cardinal News in Virginia earlier this month. The takeaway line about how Virginia is faring under Donald Trump's economic mismanagement is this: fewer jobs, higher prices, slower growth.

The firing of Federal employees, the cancellation of celebrated economic development projects, the imposition of tariffs in a chaotic on-again, off-again, pause-again, give-you-an-exception, we-will- renegotiate regime--all of these things are deeply hurting the Virginia economy, and I know my colleagues around the country are experiencing the same thing.

That economic wrecking ball composes many elements beyond the tariffs, but the tariffs are really the central item that is causing damage to our economy right now.

The tariffs that have been imposed by President Trump on Canada, like the Brazil tariffs we discussed yesterday or the ``Liberation Day'' tariffs we will talk about tomorrow, are proposed under the statute IEEPA.

Yesterday on the floor, as I talked about the Brazilian tariffs, I told everyone what IEEPA was meant to do. It was meant to give the President power to take action in the event of an international emergency.

An international emergency is defined in a pretty significant way so as to not be used in minor instances. The definition under IEEPA says that a President may take certain actions when there is an extraordinary and unusual threat to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States--an extraordinary and unusual threat.

Before President Trump, what kind of emergencies have been triggered under IEEPA by Democratic and Republican Presidents? The existence and activities of transnational criminal organizations, malicious cyber- enabled activities that target the United States, human rights violations that affect the United States, corruption that affects the United States, pervasive strategies by foreign nations to evade sanctions imposed by the United States, foreign interference in U.S. elections.

These are the kinds of unusual and extraordinary actions originating in whole or substantially in part outside the United States that have been labeled by Presidents an ``international emergency'' under IEEPA to enable a President to take certain action. President Trump has stretched this notion of emergency far beyond the language of the statute and far beyond what anyone contemplated when this statute was written.

You have heard me talk about the President declaring an energy emergency when the United States is producing more energy than at any time in our history. You have heard us talk about the President declaring the prosecution of a friend of his in Brazil a national security emergency. If President Trump can define anything as an emergency, then so can any President henceforth. That is why my colleagues should be pretty careful in striking down overuse of emergency power.

So what is the emergency with respect to Canada that has inspired the President to impose these tariffs on Canada and then add to the tariffs because he saw a television advertisement he didn't like? The emergency the President has cited is the challenge of fentanyl.

Now, fentanyl is an emergency. I am not standing here on the floor of the Senate to deny that it is so. The President has used the fentanyl emergency to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and I haven't challenged those uses of emergency power. I have questions about whether tariffs are the right solution to the declared emergency. But I would not stand here on the floor of the Senate and claim that fentanyl is not an emergency that had significant origin in China and Mexico. But fentanyl is not an emergency from Canada.

In the most recent year that we had statistics, the United States seized nearly 40,000 pounds of fentanyl on the southern border of the United States coming from Mexico. That is an emergency. How much fentanyl was seized on or near the Canadian border during the same year? The answer is 21 pounds--21 pounds.

Much of that fentanyl was not necessarily seized at the border; it was seized near the border. It may have been coming from Canada, but in all likelihood, it was actually on its way to Canada because more fentanyl goes from the United States into Canada than vice versa.

So this claim that Canada is responsible for a fentanyl emergency and thus we need to punish both Canada but more especially American consumers is completely without factual basis, and it is completely illogical.

What is the emergency? The emergency apparently got augmented in the past weekend. The President saw an advertisement, as my colleague said, with a direct quote from President Ronald Reagan about why tariffs are bad, and he said: We caught the Canadians redhanded, and so we are going to add another 10-percent tariff on top of what I have already done, and we are going to stop any trade negotiations with Canada because I have such thin skin that an ad on television quoting Ronald Reagan hurts my feelings.

How about that as a rationale for trade policy? How about that? There is no emergency in this situation, and that is the reason this resolution should be supported.

But while there is no emergency, there are consequences. There are consequences to what President Trump has done with Canada.

In the economic space, my colleague talked about visitation. ``Canadian Visitors To U.S. Plummet 33% In June--Sixth Straight Month Of Steep Declines.''

Canadian visitors are the most common foreign visitors to the Commonwealth of Virginia. They tend to love Virginia Beach, and we love Canadians coming to Virginia Beach. But we have seen Canadian visitation drop. All States in the country have seen Canadian visitation drop.

There are so many other stories that I hear out on the road. I was with a baker in Virginia who has three pie shops--Mom's Apple Pie. We were talking about this back in the spring after the tariffs had been announced but before they had really bit.

She had seen tariffs in Trump's first term, and she said to me on behalf of Mom's Apple Pie--I mean, this is almost too good a story to be true--Mom's Apple Pie, for gosh sake.

She said: Senator Kaine, you have got to do something about these tariffs.

I said: Tariffs? You have three bakeries--one in Occoquan, one in Purcellville, one in Leesburg. How do tariffs affect you?

Pie tins. Pie tins. All pie tins are made of aluminum, and they all come from Canada. If you jack up the cost of aluminum with aluminum tariffs by 25 percent, apple pie gets more expensive. Nobody has to buy apple pie. If it gets more expensive, people will choose not to buy apple pie, and I got to lay people off. I saw it in Trump term 1. I am going to see in Trump term 2.

Farmers. Farmers have seen commodities be pretty darn flat. Commodity prices have not been going up. They have been getting a lot more for agricultural commodities, but the inputs aren't stable. They are getting more expensive.

One of the most significant inputs for any farmer of an agricultural vegetable or grain product is fertilizer. One of the key ingredients in fertilizer is potash, and about 80 percent of potash that goes into fertilizer used by American farmers comes from Canada.

So the initial effect of these tariffs is to raise the cost of these inputs--building supplies, food, fertilizer, pie tins. The input costs go up. And then there is never a one-way trade war, so a nation will say: Well, then, we are going to retaliate against you. We are not going to take this sitting down.

So Canada doesn't want to, but after Trump imposed the tariff, Canada retaliates on products in the ag sector, and suddenly it becomes harder for American businesses to sell products in Canada.

One of the products that is an important one in Southern States like mine is whiskey. ``The U.S. Alcohol Industry Is Reeling From Canada's Booze Boycott. Trade fight prompts pullback in purchases by the biggest export market for U.S.-made wines, costing American brands tens of millions in sales.''

Virginia is one of the top 10 States in the country in the volume of wine production. We also produce a lot of whiskey and other spirits. And Canadians like to buy American products. But the retaliation and the anger at the United States has caused many to decide to pull all American products off their shelves--all American products off their shelves. And I speak with a number of businesses in Virginia who would face this.

So the consequences are very real. My colleague from Minnesota talked about estimates that this could be already costing American families on average between $1,800 and $2,000 a year.

But it has consequences bigger than that. Canada is an ally. We are trying to convince Canada to increase their NATO expenditure up to 2 percent of GDP and related expenditures on infrastructure up to 5 percent of GDP. The new Prime Minister, Mark Carney, has gone to the Parliament and gotten their commitment to do so.

We are asking Canada to participate with us in one of President Trump's most significant military priorities, called Golden Dome. In Canada, they call it Continental Shield. They have a different name for it, but it is the same thing; it is missile defense for North America. And we are trying to get Canada to heavily invest, as they should, to try to provide missile defense in North America. It is much harder to convince an ally to spend hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars on a joint defense platform when you are punishing their economy and when we are punishing our own citizens.

So that is why we need to vote for this resolution.

There is a right way to resolve this, and my colleague mentioned it: the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. It was one of the highlights, the stellar achievements of Donald Trump's first term. NAFTA was 20 years old; it needed to be renegotiated.

Donald Trump said: We are going to renegotiate it and make it a lot better.

Guess what. He did. He and his team did make it better.

So when it came to the Senate, my recollection is it came to the Senate, and it passed by about 89 to 10. We can't get that vote on a Mother's Day resolution here. Donald Trump should be proud of USMCA.

USMCA had a provision that, in 2026, we would look at the first 5 years of its history and then make it better. Those discussions had just started when I was in Ontario about a month and a half ago. The Canadian Government felt really good about sitting around the table with the United States and Mexico and making this deal better. Donald Trump has stopped the discussions because a TV ad hurt his feelings.

The right answer to the U.S.-Canada relationship on trade is to go back to the table on USMCA, find anything that hasn't worked, anything that can be made better, negotiate it, and make it better.

Tariffs are hurting our economy, hurting our citizens, hurting our businesses. Let's terminate this bogus emergency and let our households and businesses save some money.

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